The Pennsylvania Superior Court found Monday a Northampton County judge was correct in denying a 63-year-old former Easton man's appeal of his lifetime sentence for the 42-year-old murder of an elderly city man.

Daniel Lee Graves was 21 when he and a group of friends broke into the West Berwick Street home of reclusive 75-year-old Sebastiano Patiri in 1971. His co-defendants told police Graves killed the man after the break-in; Graves was high on LSD and said he had no memory of the attack.

Graves is the oldest of a group of Northampton County killers seeking to have
their sentences reduced due to their age when they committed their
murders. In a U.S. Supreme Court case from last summer, the high court ruled that juvenile defendants are by definition immature and cannot be held to the same standards as adults. As a result, the court banned automatic life-without-parole sentences for those under the age of 18.

Graves and other appellants have argued that while they were legally adults when they committed murder, their brains had not finished maturing. As a result, they argued, the same standard for juveniles should apply to them, they said.

"If differences between mature and immature brains warranted the conclusion that life-without-parole sentences may not be imposed on juveniles ... there is no reason why those differences would not warrant the same conclusion for defendants in their mid-20s," Graves wrote in his appeal to Northampton County Court last year.

County Judge Michael Koury dismissed the argument in November, and the Superior Court agreed in a ruling issued Monday. The U.S. Supreme Court specifically limited its ruling to those younger than 18, leaving no legal avenue for Graves or other adult killers to appeal on those grounds, the court ruled.

This was Graves' latest step in an unusual journey through the world of criminal appeals. The day he was convicted, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court banned the death sentence, meaning he could only be sentenced to life without parole.

On appeal, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court granted Graves a second trial, saying he should have been allowed to use intoxication as a defense. A second jury also convicted Graves, and the Pennsylvania Legislature later outlawed intoxication as a viable defense.

The only convicted murderer in Northampton County affected by the U.S. Supreme Court ruling is Qu'eed Batts, who was 14 when he murdered Clarence "C.J." Edwards in 2006. No date has been set for the now 22-year-old's resentencing, though psychological reports are due this autumn.